


i'll hide us in the warm night

by moonbeatblues



Series: you look too good (to leave bare) [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, as is obvious in the beginning, bc i was feeling Bad and other people were feeling Bad, don't even talk to me abt talks ok, i might make a second chapter, just a little modern au, original intent was less pg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22911271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: “orlyyy, i—” jester pads in from the back room, lollipop stick hanging from her mouth, and she just sort of freezes in the doorway, eyes widening just so.god, she’s pretty— skin the same deep blue as the big hanging tapestries in dairon’s studio, curls of dark hair sticking to her cheeks and neck in the summer heat, strings of silver dangling from her horns, her ears. purple eyes, this indistinct dreamy sort of color, trained on her from across the little room so suddenly she feels somehow immobilized.“hi,” she says, and circles around the bench, eyes still a little wide— later, she’ll tell beau, lying on the floor of beau’s apartment with beau’s head in her lap, that she’d been trying so hard not to look like she was checking beau out. ‘i totally was, though,’ she says, and cards her fingers into beau’s hair. ‘how could i not?’(beau gets a lot of tattoos from jester)
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: you look too good (to leave bare) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648570
Comments: 2
Kudos: 128





	i'll hide us in the warm night

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy i needed to write some beaujes and found this in my notes- yet another modern au that is Slightly off my original

jester’s hand is cold even through the glove when it comes to rest, soft, on the side of her face.

“you’re doing great, beau,” she coos down to her, “so great. just a little longer.”

“okay,” beau grits out, and tries her hardest to relax in jester’s hold. remembers that she wanted this, remembers that she’s doing this for jester, that jester’s doing this for her.

(“why do you like doing this?” beau asks, and mouths lazily for her straw.

above her, jester is all movement, opening cabinets and pulling things out, bundling them into the wide front pocket of her smock. there’s the sound of metal on metal every time her tail flicks behind her and the jewelry hanging from it collides with itself.

she hums, face poking in front of beau’s suddenly, large and blue and looming, round and lovely as the moon. “i always liked drawing, you know that, beau.”

“yeah, but,” she struggles to rise, and jester’s hand presses at the small of her back, pushes her back down. “that’s different than putting it on someone. besides, you have to hurt people, at least a little.”

“people are art, too,” jester says, and sits down at the little desk pulled up next to the bench. “i’m just adding to it.”

her eyes narrow for a moment as she looks into beau’s, and something about it makes her prickle all over, makes her blood feel hot and frothy in her veins.

“besides, who ever said that hurting people bothers me? _especially_ ,” and she traces an invisible swirl along beau’s spine with a finger, making her shiver, “if they ask for it.”)

“this is gonna look so pretty, beau,” she breathes, barely audible over the buzz of the gun.

“yeah?” she tries to crane her head to see down the bench, the side of her rib cage where jester’s shading.

“yeah.” there’s a long moment of quiet, heavy and warm, and then jester sighs.

“i’m really glad i can do this for you, you know? i’m really glad you trust me this much.”

she doesn’t look up from her work, keeps pressing the gun over the same line, but somehow beau still feels pinned there, unable to move. there’s a bubble of air caught in her chest, half of an exhale, and she can’t seem to let it out in case it drowns out what jester’s saying. she hardly wants to _breathe_ around jester, because everything jester says sounds like the most important thing in the world, and she doesn’t want to miss it.

“me too.”

jester smiles, head still tipped down to her work.

(“jes—” she wheezes, almost lurches up and remembers at the last moment not to. “wait. please.”

“hmm?” jester’s wearing glasses, today, the kind she wears when she’s too sleepy to put in her contacts. behind the round frames her eyebrows draw together and knit over her nose. “what’s wrong, beau?”

“just,” the leather loudly protests as her fist closes on it. “didn’t realize it would hurt that bad.”

after a second she can feel jester’s cold hand sliding up her stomach, giving the area with the stencil a wide berth, and she tries to uncoil the muscles in her belly.

it’s new, this thing they’ve got, and she’s still dizzy on how it feels when jester touches her like this, on remembering that it gets to _mean_ something. that she’s not _weird_ , or _wrong_ for reading into it, that jester _wants_ her to read into it.

“it hurts more since it’s closer to the bone,” jester says, looking up at her. “are you okay to keep going?”

there’s a funny look in her eye, beau can see now— like she’s testing something, gauging beau’s response. it makes her want to make her proud, somehow.

“yeah,” she says, and releases the leather of the bench. “i’m ready.”

“good,” jester says, and trails her fingers along beau’s stomach for another moment, seeming almost pensive. the rattle of the gun starts up again, and beau tries to just think about that look in jester’s eye, like she wanted to see if beau could do it. wants to show her that she can.)

the first one she’d gotten here hadn’t even been from jester, is the funny thing. jester had just started working there, and happened to be in the building when beau had been there.

(orly’s shop is small, just a little foyer with the register and a few chairs, the back room, and the actual room with the bench and the gun.

she’s just folding her shirt after taking it off when jester walks in, and it’s one of those moments she somehow knows is going to matter for the rest of her life, is like a fulcrum everything else revolves around.

“orlyyy, i—” jester pads in from the back room, lollipop stick hanging from her mouth, and she just sort of freezes in the doorway, eyes widening just so.

 _god_ , she’s pretty— skin the same deep blue as the big hanging tapestries in dairon’s studio, curls of dark hair sticking to her cheeks and neck in the summer heat, strings of silver dangling from her horns, her ears. purple eyes, this indistinct dreamy sort of color, trained on her from across the little room so suddenly she feels somehow immobilized.

“ _hi_ ,” she says, and circles around the bench, eyes still a little wide— later, she’ll tell beau, lying on the floor of beau’s apartment with beau’s head in her lap, that she’d been trying so hard not to look like she was checking beau out. ‘i totally was, though,’ she says, and cards her fingers into beau’s hair. ‘how could i not?’

“hey, uh—” suddenly, all she can think about how the air, cool and recycled so many times through the shoddy air conditioner it smells like cheap metal, feels on her shoulders, her back. her _bare_ shoulders and back. she doesn’t know what to say— orly’s still rifling through some boxes, and just grunts at jester’s arrival.

“jester,” she says, and sticks out a hand to beau. “lavorre. i work here, too.” she says it like she’s trying to convince herself of it.

beau takes her hand. “yeah, i, uh, i figured. beau.”

there’s a moment after jester stops shaking her hand and still holds it— god, her hand is cold— and it’s like there’s something passing between them. beau almost feels, in that moment, like she’s agreeing to something, is wondering— wondering, but not afraid of— what it is.

then, orly pops his head back up. “yeah, jester?” jester drops her hand, and the moment pops like a soap bubble, ethereal and somehow containing only them.)

later, jester’s wrapping her tattoo in front of the big mirror that hangs on the back of the door. it’s dark out— jester likes to bring her here after closing, so there’s no ambient chatter while she’s working, no interruptions. it’s like recreating that same soap-bubble feeling she’d had when they met, making spaces where it’s just them, what they say and how they feel, and the feeling of jester’s cold hands on her.

“see, beau?” jester finishes carefully pulling the plastic wrap around her rib cage and sets the roll aside, stands behind her and hooks her chin over beau’s shoulder. “pretty, like you.”

underneath the plastic, beading a little with blood, she can see the long, curved line of a fern stem, each shoot blooming with leaves. god, jester’s work is so lovely— in another world, she thinks, she’d have found jester’s instagram first, fawned over how vibrant her work was, imagined it must feel almost runelike, to have something like it on your skin. maybe she’d have driven the hours it would have taken to get here from zadash (or worse, kamordah) and met her once, framed the instance in her mind like meeting a musician when they were, inexplicably, in the same little music shop as you, buying new strings.

in this world, though, where she lives so drunk on the warmth of jester and _being with_ jester that she feels like a cat, asleep in the sun, she turns her head to the side so jester’s lips find the corner of her mouth when she leans up.

her shirt’s off— if she turns in front of the mirror, she’ll see herself covered in jester’s work, her back, the curve of her hipbone, her upper arms. and now, of course, her ribs.

“come on,” jester whispers, arms sliding around beau’s waist carefully. “let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! full disclosure i've been talking a lot about the past talks ep but my meta is usually harmless!!


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